Chronic Fatigue

At work today, everyone else was down and expected me to be as well. I just couldn’t muster any – Mondays are bad after a sick weekend – my sleep is all screwed, my voice is gone (not much talking after most of the weekend in bed), and if the sickness is still around, well, there you go.

So, not much interaction, we all went to lunch, and I just pretty much sat there. Someone asked me about the goings on, and I was just like “Meh.” Nothing personal, but I’m shut down.

Yoga was good – it was a welcome escape from work expectations. But I kept on thinking of things I could do – had to focus on breathing.

And afterwards, found a Depeche Mode playlist on youtube and just finally got an emotion – happy! Supposed to be sad, but they always cheer me up. By the way, I also love Goth Electro: Tribute to Depeche Mode. I guess on youtube: Goth Electro Tribute to Depeche Mode (youtube)

Started to get silly, so on to Rag’n’Bone Man – Human (Official Video).

And finally Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) – official video.

The Gotye song is simply one that has come up along the way.

Anyway, music, it does a body good!

So the brain fog is heavy and the final symptom has hit. I’m at work and if it didn’t take caring, I’d go home.

For the past two weeks, the brain fog has been medium and I could tell at yoga that I really didn’t care about being there – despite trying to string together an attendance record.

How to put in words what I feel – how long it took me to realize a fragment of words, forget it, stir through the fog, and come up with enough of the gist of the thought? I want my writing to flow – to appear crisp and effortless. I feel like a shadow of what I am capable of crafting.

I’ve learned to be terse in technical writing and it hampers my efforts in fiction or journaling.

I still don’t care, probably won’t get much done today, it bugs the work ethic I’ve built up in myself, but I know deep down it can’t be helped. This isn’t me being lazy (just added that to the title!), this is me being sick and getting through the day. I worked hard last week and I’ll work hard some more soon. I have to let go of the guilt I am not feeling.

Don’t know how else to put it – there is guilt – but it is floating a layer above my inner critic. He is watching the guilt drift by and he is waving to it. Learning that I am not disassociating the emotion from my upbringing (work ethic) has been liberating. The disassociation is literally the disease, not depression, not an explicit action on my part. If it were depression, I would feel the guilt.

Sometimes I can’t sleep – well actually, I may be dreaming that I can’t sleep. The other night I was convinced I was awake, but I had no clue about the earthquake that struck at 2:30am. But somehow, even dreaming I haven’t slept seems to make me tired.

So the double whammy is loosing sleep and getting the chronic fatigue.

When it hits, it isn’t fatigue – it isn’t lack of sleep – it is either brain fog or a lack of desire to do anything. The brain fog means I can’t remember simple things. Last night I was trying to say I got essential oils for Christmas. It came out as “not incense, an aroma”. It took me 10 minutes to come up with essential oils in my mind – of course the person I had been talking to was long gone.

And the other symptom is the hard one to talk about – most people confuse it with depression when I try to describe it. But it isn’t that – the best I can come up with is that depression has an emotional context and this symptom does not. I can see however why people confuse it and why researchers might put the blame on the person and not the symptom.

I might act like I care about you or the task at hand – but I don’t. I simply balance an equation in my mind as to whether I care about you or it when I’m not sick. And if I do, then I’ll force myself to take action. And if I can’t force myself to take action, I don’t leave the house.

Two common misbeliefs about chronic fatigue are that

1. It is mental/emotional
2. Exercise can cure it.

See Bad Science Has Misled Millions With Chronic Fatigue, Court Order Reveals and For People With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, More Exercise Isn’t Better.

For me, my adventure began shortly after I started losing weight via walking/running and yoga. I’ve always wondered if that lifestyle change triggered the disorder in me, but I wouldn’t trade the yoga away for the disorder. I don’t have it as bad as most (I think) and my worst days sound like good days to some of the stories I read at https://themighty.com.

But, what yoga does bring me is a barometer to my health. I generally like my yoga instructors and some of them I love, so when I start asking myself why I am in a class, what I am getting out of it, and how long until it is over, I know I am near my worst. My worst? I won’t even go to a class – despite whatever grand scheme I have in place for attendance.

The stories all seem to be the same, your friend gets the flu. You get the flu. Your friend gets better, you get better. Then you get sick again and can’t kick it. You think it might be depression, but you still can’t shake it.

Eventually, you go to the doctor and you find out you have chronic fatigue. And then you have to figure out what that means…

Some event in your life triggered it, it may have been the flu, it may have been stress, or as I fear, it may have been weight loss and exercise. 🙂

(In my case, my friend got sick again and so did I. Only he eventually got over it.)